A Place to Stand: The Making of a Poet

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Summary: The memoir of a difficult and sometimes violent life
Review: A Place To Stand, by award winning poet and seasoned playwright Jimmy Santiago Baca, is the memoir of a difficult and sometimes violent life. Sent to an orphanage at a young age, encountering violence and bigotry at each turn, he became a criminal and a drug dealer. Sentenced to prison, he had to go to extreme lengths to stay alive - even slicing an attacker's stomach with a butcher knife. Though self-defense, his violent acts earned him repeated time in solitary confinement. There, struggling to resist the dehumanization of prison life, he encountered memories and revelations that transformed him and inspired him to express himself through poetry. Yet even when the end of his prison sentence and freedom beckoned, more tragedy awaited him and his family. A harrowing true story, of unbearable loss and suffering, with a final revelation offering a tiny flicker of hope. A Place To Stand is riveting, compelling, impossible to put down and highly recommended.



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Summary: Victim
Review: Although the writing is excellent, I couldnt get pass Baca's reoccurring theme that he was in jail because he was in the wrong place at the wrong time and things just never went well for him. He blamed everything on other people and never took responsibility. He describes the police during a drug at his house by saying the cops just shot at them for no reason. He never expressed any remorse for an officer who was killed.
I felt sorry for Baca during his pitiful childhood and it is amazing what he has endured to become a successful writer and poet but who wants to listen to a whiny victim for long?

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Summary: Powerful, Sad and Inspirational
Review: Being a Chicano, about the same age as Jimmy Baca and the son of a prison guard who worked for 28 years at Ariz State Prison, I read this story with great interest. I not convinced that all the details about Jimmy's time in the Joint were believeable but Mr Baca has my absolute respect for elevating himself and recognizing that surviving meant more than just "geeting out!". He writes with the anger, color and passion of a proud latino who understands that life only gets better if YOU change it. I recommend this work as well as Jimmy's poetry.

Rating:
Summary: Powerful, Sad and Inspirational
Review: Being a Chicano, about the same age as Jimmy Baca and the son of a prison guard who worked for 28 years at Ariz State Prison, I read this story with great interest. I not convinced that all the details about Jimmy's time in the Joint were believeable but Mr Baca has my absolute respect for elevating himself and recognizing that surviving meant more than just "geeting out!". He writes with the anger, color and passion of a proud latino who understands that life only gets better if YOU change it. I recommend this work as well as Jimmy's poetry.

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Summary: Five Stars Mr. Baca!
Review: I fell upon this book in a Pasadena, California bookstore while looking for a book to read on my journey back to Saudi Arabia. I finished this riveting tale midway across the Atlantic. Mr. Baca's means of describing the details of his childhood hits a chord with fabulous descriptions of both the bitter and sweet moments in his life. I know that Jimmy's grandfather is looking down from heaven with pride in his grandson's accomplishments as a both a writer and outstanding human being. An awesome book Jimmy Santiago Baca! Thank You for letting me into your life.

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Summary: Notes from The Lower Depths
Review: I had never heard of Mr. Baca until I saw him discussing this book and a new book of his poetry on public television. It is the searing account of his childhood in New Mexico, his life as a drug dealer in San Diego and Arizona and his five year sentence in a maximum-security prison for a crime that he says he did not commit. The things that happen to Mr. Baca would have killed a weaker person. He is abandoned by both his parents, his father is an alcoholic, he spents time in an orphanage, he becomes a drug dealer, he is in and out of jails, he is illiterate, he spends most of his five year sentence for dealing drugs in solitary. While in prison Mr. Baca teaches himself to read and becomes a poet; he quite literally is saved by language. He is awakened to the beauty of language by poets like Wordsworth, Lorca and Whitman. I think he would disagree with W. H. Auden's line that "poetry makes nothing happen." Mr. Baca's account of his discovery of language is as moving and transcendent as his searing account of prison life is an indictment of America's racism. One has to admire the writer's courage, his refusal to become an animal in horrible prison surroundings. But I must say I was put off by his repeated use of the words "faggot" and "fag" The African American Mr. Baca attacks because he shows a sexual interest in him is called a "black ..." I wondered if he used the N word in prison but could not use it here for his readers. In my optimism I always hope that one minority-- Mr. Baca is Latino-- does not need to put down another.

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Summary: Inspirational
Review: I was touched by the author's story and commend him for making it through a very rough life. I could relate with him when he told of his early chilhood days. I was raised in Albuqurerque New Mexico and had a Grandfather and Grandmother "Baca". His descriptions of family, food, and places touched home.
I couldn't put this book down, a very good read.

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Summary: The best one yet
Review: I've read a lot of books, and this is the best book I have ever read in my life time, well ok one of the top 3 books I've read ing my life! Anyone who doesn't get this one is really missing out! Jimmy S. Baca's Biography is a must have for any Chicano reader!

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Summary: Read this book!
Review: Jimmy Baca has revealed his life's story in a brutally honest, gripping narrative. His masterful ability to use words to describe the entire range of human experience - from pain to redemption - is simply thrilling. He reveals some of the horrors and wonders of being Mexican-American in an American culture that routinely has failed to see the astonishing potential in far too many of his brothers and sisters. He takes us with him into worlds few have known and leaves us feeling more human for having gone on the journey with him.

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Summary: Baca can stand very tall
Review: Jimmy Santiago Baca has written a brilliant, honest, and extremely sad autobiography. Eventhough his life story is well detailed in this book-- I believe he revealed too much of his prison life. Yes, he was jailed for a considerable amount of time of any person's life, but he could have written more about his mother's life. She abandons her children and husband to live a life as an Anglo woman at a time in New Mexico, where Mexicans are perceived to be servants to the Anglo people. She marries an Anglo man and builds a new family and forever denies the existence of her Mexican children. As a consequence she pays dearly for her betrayal and greed. His father, brother, and himself for a brief period of his life, succum to a self-destruction runaway trip that kills many Mexicans even to this day. After reading this book, I was left with a desire to wish that Jimmy S. Baca write a second part to his autobiography.